Fedaa Nassar says any time she has heard the phone ring in the last year, she becomes overwhelmed with anxiety. "I hate phone calls now," says the 34-year-old lab technician at an Ottawa-area hospital. It's because she worries the person on the other line will tell her that her dad, mom, brother and two sisters have died in the Gaza Strip.
Sleep is fitful, she says. "I wake up three to four times during the night to check if they're still alive or not." Nassar immigrated to Canada from the besieged Palestinian territory in 2018.
Like other Palestinian-Canadians, she has been in a constant state of worry since Oct. 7, 2023, when a cross-border attack by the militant group Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and more than 250 were taken hostage. In response, Israel declared war on Hamas in Gaza.
More than 41,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and local health officials have said just over half the dead have been women and children. There have been bombings, disease and famine. The war has recently been followed by escalating violence in other parts of the Middle East, including between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.
Nassar says her relatives in Gaza have been displaced seven times in the last 12 months. The home they spent their lives saving up to buy is gone. She has also lost friends, she says, including one who disappeared under one of the hundreds of buildings levelled in the war.
"My friend and her two sons — still under the rubble," Nassar .
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